Indian Monsoon and India’s Extreme Rainfall ‘Corridor’

Context: Existence of a stationary element in the dynamics of Indian monsoon since 1901-2019,  where the synchronized extreme rainfall events occur and are restricted to a corridor, finds a new study.

Key Findings of Study on Indian Monsoon

• Trends in Indian monsoon: For more than seven decades, total seasonal rainfall has trended downwards due to differential heating of land masses  and sea  due to global warming. 
• Large-scale extreme rainfall events: Intense wet spells particularly over Central India have become larger in scale due to the influence of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal combined.
• The ‘highway’/corridor: It extends from parts of West Bengal and Odisha to parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, making it a narrow highway or corridor of concentrated  large-scale extreme rainfall events. 
• Capturing Complex Rainfall Relationships: Traditional statistical methods tend to miss the complex relations between multiple nodes of rainfall centers.
• • Nodes are the Centre points of concentrated rainfall over a period of time considered for the study purpose. 
• Unpredictability of the Indian Monsoon: Stationary elements no longer exist in climate systems because of global warming. 
  • Yet the Indian monsoon continues to produce surprises in the way it is able to synchronize heavy rain events as well as stick to the ‘highway’ for such a long time.

News source: The Hindu